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News

August 2012

In this month's News you will find:

Red Square Maths With Attitude: 2nd Edition

Red Square Gold! It's Gold for Potatoes

Red Square Professional Development:
Working Mathematically with Infants

Red Square From The Classroom x 3

Red Square Tasks of the Month
Task 148, McMahon's Triangles 1
Task 180, Making Monuments

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Maths With Attitude: 2nd Edition
We announced this new edition in the previous eNews and the first order was received in less than 24 hours.
First released in 2002, in this second edition Maths With Attitude has been reviewed, refreshed, revitalised and reconstructed to give it more web strength while retaining the same successful content and planning approach.
The kits are at one with the Australian Mathematics Curriculum focus of:
...developing increasingly sophisticated and refined mathematical understanding, fluency, logical reasoning, analytical thought and problem-solving skills
and they place the development of content skills in this context.
The flexible structure and organisation of MWA kits offers you choices. You might see:
- A box of hands-on tasks organised by content strand.
  or...
- A box of tasks with a manual linking them to Maths300 lessons with related content.
  or...
- A box of tasks and linked Maths300 lessons planned out as a unit of work.
  or...
- A suite of kits using tasks and lessons as the investigative elements of units of work ready to splice into current school practice.
  or...
- A suite of kits offering the opportunity to build a new, investigation-based, core curriculum in learning to work like a mathematician.
Click any manual cover to find the tasks and linked lessons for that kit and see Link List below for more information.

Gold! It's Gold for Potatoes
I just had to share with you the fun and excitement of Potato Olympics at Mt. Dandenong Primary school over the past few weeks. We have 2 graduate teachers in 3/4 who were very keen to find the 'hook' for their maths activities. So it was decided a bag of potatoes would be a great start and they would take it from there for students to develop and discover the mathematical phenomena in a bag of potatoes. I remembered the 2 big folders of Classroom Connections still in my collection and yes I had the articles you had written on 'Potato Olympics' and other related 'Maths in Potatoes' activities.
The students have had weeks of training, event organising, personal bests, as well as measuring, estimating, sorting and comparing whilst discovering 'Where is the maths?' in potatoes.

The students have had a ball with our playgrounds and corridors filled with the excitement of events. It also just happened that the same two classes where scheduled to present their class Friday Assemblies, where students from all areas of the school showcase the learning from their level to the whole school.

One class presented their learning in the form of an Opening Ceremony with a parade of participating potatoes and their flags from each state of Australia with speeches and interviews with coaches about their potatoes. The other class concluded the Potato Olympics yesterday with a closing ceremony with all our award winning potatoes on show. A slide show of the events and medal presentations captured the fun and excitement experienced by all the students.
Sue Gibson (Acting AP)

Many thanks Sue for taking the time to share this exciting experience. You've gotta love it when the learning comes together like this. Thanks also to your teachers Rosemary Brehaut and Natalie Stratford for doing the hard yards with the children to make it happen. Remember, it might be four years until the next olympics, but the Spudville Athletic Carnival can be an annual event.
- Find more on Potato Olympics, including the article Sue mentions through the Link List below.

Professional Development: Working Mathematically with Infants
While this eNews was being prepared we had a call from a regional leader wanting to find out more about Working Mathematically with Infants because one of her schools was raving about it. The teachers say it's so well organised and easy to use and the children love it. Perhaps timely then (at least for Victorian teachers) that we are representing the Working Mathematically with Infants workshop day through Critical Agendas on October 29th for K - 2 teachers.
See Link List below for details. If you can't get to Melbourne but you would like us to bring PD to you - anywhere - give us a call to talk about possibilities.

From The Classroom x 3
Our role is to collect and retell stories of success about students (and teachers perhaps) learning to work like a mathematician. One way to do that is for you to contribute your success stories - those times when your class's learning has really excited you. Many thanks to these three teachers who have done just that and had their story added a From The Classroom section of the relevant task cameo.
Special thanks to Gemma, Robert & Damian for their collegiate approach. See Link List below.

Tasks of the Month
Two new cameos this month.
- McMahon's Triangles 1 is a logical search for all the ways to colour three sections of an equilateral triangle using four colours. Cleverly, there is no actual time wasted colouring - counters are placed to 'claim' a section as coloured. The outcome of the search shows how the pieces of McMahon's Triangles 2 (#107) were designed and also links the task to Coloured Squares (#112).
- Making Monuments is a story shell about building a tiled monument in the middle of a park and paths with equal size tiles leading up to it from the four points of the compass. It is relatively straightforward on first sight, but opens the door to a great deal of a pattern and algebra work. The cameo is further enhanced by a contribution tweaking the activity to support the topic of functions in senior secondary school.
McMahon's Triangles 1 Making Monuments
Click a photo to access its cameo, or access all current cameos through the Link List below.

Keep smiling,
Doug.

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Link List

Maths With Attitude: 2nd Edition
Potato Olympics Video in Cube Tube (scroll down)
Working Mathematically with Infants:
PD information & application (PDF)
Working Mathematically with Infants: Introduction
Travelling Australia
Win At The Fair
Making Monuments
Task Cameo Library (164 tasks listed)

Did you miss June/July News?
If so you missed information about:
1. Maths With Attitude: 2nd Edition
2. Latest order form and price DEcrease
3. Menu Maths strengthened
4. Counter Escape: addition
5. Maths300 news
6. Iceberg Information about two Tasks of the Month
  (Tasks 212, 235)
7. ...and more...

Did You Know?

You can find tasks coded by Year Level and Curriculum Strand in the Task Centre Catalogue (PDF file).
The Activities link of Calculating Changes offers Content Finder & Year Level Finder tools.
Our Site Map acts as a Table of Contents to help you find what you need in Mathematics Centre.
You can search for lessons by Year Level, Curriculum Strand, Lesson Features & Keyword at Maths300.
You can connect Tasks to their Maths300 companion lesson using Tasks & Maths300 (a PDF file).
Excel version provided by Pymble Ladies' College
All these links, and more, appear in Working with Mathematics Centre (a PDF file).

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